If on-campus men’s centers are a push-back against feminism, what exactly are they pushing back against? Let’s look at The Redstockings Manifesto.

Well, I had a very productive weekend! I finished that stupid mandatory library tutorial, although it didn’t take me three hours. I opened the first of twelve learning modules and it was exactly as simplistic as I thought it was going to be, so I went directly to the final test, which required a grade of 90% to pass. Took me three tries, but given that I didn’t actually read any of the material, that’s not bad.

I also finished the first draft of my official Research Proposal, which came in at 29 pages, which I have now submitted to my committee for review. They will no doubt come back with some changes for me, and then once those are done, it’s on to the Ethics for Data Collection.

Mr. JB and I are also working through changes in the division of domestic labor to accommodate for the time I need to put into my PhD. The big change is that he is the on-call parent on the weekends and he has to do all the playdate and birthday party and sleepover organizing, but he’s good at that kind of stuff, so it’s really just a matter of shifting his priorities a bit. He also has to get breakfast and lunches sorted for the weekends, and his current strategy is to farm the kids out to the other people at mealtimes, but I’m not sure how that’s going to hold up in the long-run. He may have to learn to grate some cheese and melt it between tortillas in the quesadilla maker. I still prepare the main meals, partly because I like to, but mostly because I’m pretty sure I don’t want to eat what he would come up with for dinner.

Ewwwww. I made these once for my children and they refused to even touch them. They are pretty disgusting. And finally, Mr. JB is now in charge of collecting, sorting, washing and drying the laundry. He hates folding it and putting it away, so I do that part. I suppose I could be a bitch about it, but he is still earning the only income in this house and I feel the majority of the domestic work is still my responsibility

I did hear the words “this is bullshit” repeated many times, especially when he found a bunch of white socks shoved under the couch and he just did a load of white laundry, and he is mentally calculating the cost of all the Legos and Barbies we have in this house, which is not good, but ultimately it’s all working out.

On Friday, while I was folding laundry, I tuned in at BlogTalkRadio to listen to the events taking place in Toronto, where Miles Groth was presenting at the University of Toronto, and making a case for why universities need to start funding academic and social centers that consider the needs of men and boys from the perspective of …. men and boys!

I know! Shocking, right? Previous attempts to discuss the topic ended up with screaming women’s studies protesters and pulled fire alarms and riot police and it was just a huge mess! The Canadian Association for Equality (CAFÉ) was forced to pay a pre-emptive security fee for Friday’s event, as a “militant response” was promised from the Nazi feminist protesters.

I followed a few news crews on Twitter, who had posted images of themselves with cameras at the ready, waiting for all hell to break loose.

And they’re still waiting. In the face of some organized opposition, the feminist brigade surrendered unconditionally. The subsequent media coverage was pretty meek, although several reproduced a quote from a woman’s studies prof who claims that the movement to discuss men and boys is really a backlash against feminism.

Annalee Lepp, associate professor and chair in the department of women’s studies at the University of Victoria, said she believes the issue of violence on campus has broadened from a discussion solely centred on women to encompass other targets of potential attacks, such as gay and trans students.

Lepp said while she has nothing against the creation of men’s centres on campuses, she questions the politics behind it.

“I think there has been a lot of work done by men who align themselves with feminism that have been doing the kinds of work that feminism has been doing for many, many years and becoming allies of the movement — or actively calling themselves feminists,” said Lepp, president of Women’s and Gender Studies et Recherches Feministes.

“In some segments of the men’s movement, it’s definitely a backlash against feminism as if feminism has created a context where something has been taken away from men.”

Has feminism created a context where something has been taken away from not just men, but women, too?

Let’s take a look at this little charming polemic, written back in 1969, that explains just what the goals of modern, second-wave feminism are, called The Redstockings Manifesto. The manifesto is in italics, and I’ve interspersed some comments and observations of my own, in an effort to reveal what we are pushing back against, and who has paid the price for this cultural re-imagining.

I After centuries of individual and preliminary political struggle, women are uniting to achieve their final liberation from male supremacy. Redstockings is dedicated to building this unity and winning our freedom.

This right here is the central reason why we need academic centers focused on the needs of men and boys outside the feminist ideology of gender studies. What male supremacy are you talking about? Which men? All the ones thrown away in countless wars? Men of color? Poor men? Gay men? Unmarried men? Infertile men? Disabled men? Homeless men? All the men dead by their own hands?

What supremacy did those men have? Over whom?

Beginning with the idea that all men experienced the untold luxuries of being born male and that all women suffered under their boot heels is exactly why feminist ideology cannot address the needs of men and boys in any meaningful way.

The rich are the ones with supremacy. Men and women alike. Confusing “patriarchy” with “aristocracy” is exactly what makes feminism so ineffective as a method of inquiry. An entire philosophy that rests on a mistaken assumption about men will never lead to any conclusions other than men are bad and get what they deserve.

II Women are an oppressed class. Our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives. We are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants, and cheap labor. We are considered inferior beings, whose only purpose is to enhance men’s lives. Our humanity is denied. Our prescribed behavior is enforced by the threat of physical violence.

Again, which women? Rich white ladies? Oh, they’re exploited, are they? All those women with nannies and housekeepers are treated like so much domestic labor? In truth, there ARE women who are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants and cheap labor. Sex workers, women in fundamentalist religious sects, actual domestic servants and poor women with no job market skills.

Guess what? Male sex workers are exploited as sex objects, too. And furthermore, all sex workers can be complicit in their “exploitation”, the same way accountants are complicit in having their numeracy skills exploited. Being a sex worker doesn’t make anyone an automatic victim, and it doesn’t make them blind or stupid or ignorant or in need of special protection. Men who are in fundamentalist religious sects are breeders, too. Women don’t have babies all by themselves. Plenty of men are domestic workers, too. Gardeners, handymen, repairmen, drivers – men with few job market skills get paid shit wages to do crap work, too.

Everyone’s proscribed behavior is enforced with the threat of physical violence. Follow the rules or you will meet the police, who, if they are inclined towards gentleness at all, will most likely mete gentleness out to WOMEN and not men. Try resisting arrest as a man. The “threat of physical violence” is exactly what most women depend on not having to confront. Those protesters at UofT who physically assaulted men counted on no retaliation, and they counted on the police to ensure their safety.

Because we have lived so intimately with our oppressors, in isolation from each other, we have been kept from seeing our personal suffering as a political condition. This creates the illusion that a woman’s relationship with her man is a matter of interplay between two unique personalities, and can be worked out individually. In reality, every such relationship is a class relationship, and the conflicts between individual men and women are political conflicts that can only be solved collectively.

Men = oppressor

Personal = political

Those two untested and unproven assumptions are again the reason that feminist gender studies CANNOT honestly and accurately reflect the interests of men and boys. If you begin with the assumption that men are oppressive, you will invariably ignore all evidence to the contrary because it contradicts the most basic premise of the philosophy.

III We identify the agents of our oppression as men. Male supremacy is the oldest, most basic form of domination. All other forms of exploitation and oppression (racism, capitalism, imperialism, etc.) are extensions of male supremacy: men dominate women, a few men dominate the rest. All power structures throughout history have been male-dominated and male-oriented. Men have controlled all political, economic and cultural institutions and backed up this control with physical force. They have used their power to keep women in an inferior position. All men receive economic, sexual, and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men have oppressed women.

All men have oppressed women. All the inventions and accomplishments and achievements of men’s work to make all our lives easier, safer and longer are in fact just tools that men use to oppress women. All men. Antibiotics, electronics, the flush toilet, washing machines, advanced cancer treatments, potable water, food, heat, houses, clothing – all just tools to oppress women.

And all the men with no power, they oppress women, too. Doing the dangerous, dirty unrewarded work that we require to function as a society, like digging coal out of the ground or hauling sewage or collecting trash – all of that is just a tool to oppress women?

All power structures through history have been male-oriented. Well, except for primary education, the aristocracy, traditional peasant marketplaces, and every informal avenue of power, which is where women’s command resides.

IV Attempts have been made to shift the burden of responsibility from men to institutions or to women themselves. We condemn these arguments as evasions. Institutions alone do not oppress; they are merely tools of the oppressor. To blame institutions implies that men and women are equally victimized, obscures the fact that men benefit from the subordination of women, and gives men the excuse that they are forced to be oppressors. On the contrary, any man is free to renounce his superior position, provided that he is willing to be treated like a woman by other men.

Men are forced to be oppressors? How about the vast majority of men aren’t oppressing anyone at all, and certainly not women specifically. And you know, it’s true that men and women are not equally victimized by particular institutions: men are generally MORE victimized.

The judiciary? Men are sentenced more frequently and more harshly for their crimes than women are.

The health care system? More money goes to fund women’s health concerns than men’s and that is on a GLOBAL scale. Of the 8 United Nations Millennium Goals, one is specific to women alone (maternal health) and all the others “touch on essential aspects of women’s well-being, and in turn, women’s empowerment is critical for achieving the goals”.

Number of goals targeted at men specifically?

Despite the fact that of the top ten health problems around the world, most are far more common in men. Don’t be afraid, guys, to renounce your superior position of being allowed to die. If the price is being “treated like a woman”, well maybe that’s not so bad? It would be kind of nice if the world acted like men’s health was at least as important as women’s, no?

How about the institutions of education and advanced training? How’s male supremacy working out there? Oh, boys are dropping out of school in record numbers and failing to acquire advanced training and education? Now why is that?

How dare you even ask such a thing, you evil, oppressive misogynist! You must hate women! That is essentially the response Miles Groth got when he asked that very question. Why are boys and men missing from our educational institutions? Where have they gone?

The idea that feminism, which assumes all men have oppressed women and that all cultural and political and economic institutions benefit men at the expense of women could possibly answer this question is laughable.

There is a reason that foxes don’t guard henhouses.

We also reject the idea that women consent to or are to blame for their own oppression. Women’s submission is not the result of brain-washing, stupidity or mental illness but of continual, daily pressure from men. We do not need to change ourselves, but to change men.

Not often you see the idea expressed so boldly, is it?

The women who wrote this manifesto want men gone. The problem is men and they need to be changed.

Into what, pray tell?

And these are the women who are going to decide how to handle the challenges facing boys and men?

The most slanderous evasion of all is that women can oppress men. The basis for this illusion is the isolation of individual relationships from their political context and the tendency of men to see any legitimate challenge to their privileges as persecution.

Let’s think about this statement in context of what comes next. What constitutes a “legitimate challenge”?

V We regard our personal experience, and our feelings about that experience, as the basis for an analysis of our common situation. We cannot rely on existing ideologies as they are all products of male supremacist culture. We question every generalization and accept none that are not confirmed by our experience.

There we go. Personal experience, and women’s feelings about those experiences are what is to constitute evidence and the basis for legitimate challenge. Feminists accept no theories that are not confirmed by experience, which probably goes a long way towards explaining why there are so few them studying particular physics.

Darn little quarks are so hard to see! Guess that proves they don’t exist.

Actually feminism has a big problem with empiricism and the scientific method itself, which are obviously tools of the patriarchy.

Science, it would seem is not sexless; she is a man, a father and infected too. –

Virginia Woolf

No doubt, Virginia probably wrote that sitting in a comfortable armchair built by men, covered in sturdy brocade developed by men, sporting a delightful profusion of colors from a dye process invented by men, using a fancy new ballpoint pen created by men on crisp white paper produced by men.

The irony.

Most feminist critiques focus on the practice of science. That is, they criticize both “the ways in which women are inhibited from entering into science professions” and the ways in which science has, and is, being used (by men) to oppress women.

Some feminist philosophers of science, however, focus on the scientific method itself by criticizing the classical desiderata of the scientific method. Special focus is paid to the notion of objectivity. Objectivity, claim some, is only “ostensibly [the] non-involved stance.” In actuality, it is the male stance. Therefore, the story goes, our respect for the scientific method is simply an outcome of our traditional (sexist, hence, male-biased) political inclinations.

They really aren’t kidding. Personal feelings are what constitutes evidence and legitimate challenge. Objectivity is sexist.

And it’s playing out in #rapeculture in particular. If she feels it was rape, then it was.

Gee. What can wrong with that approach?

Our chief task at present is to develop female class consciousness through sharing experience and publicly exposing the sexist foundation of all our institutions. Consciousness-raising is not “therapy,” which implies the existence of individual solutions and falsely assumes that the male-female relationship is purely personal, but the only method by which we can ensure that our program for liberation is based on the concrete realities of our lives.

Get together and share those feelings ladies, not just to get it all out and feel better, but to harness the collective hurt-feelings and mobilize them to affect all the institutions and organizations of the culture.

It’s kind of amazing how well feminism succeeded in making the entire culture about their own feelings, isn’t it? But I have a feeling that it worked kind of the way the first set of protests in Toronto worked – because the men didn’t push back.

And when they do, some “feelings” are gonna be in for a big shock!

The first requirement for raising class consciousness is honesty, in private and in public, with ourselves and other women.

VI We identify with all women. We define our best interest as that of the poorest, most brutally exploited woman.

Oh, except for you women over there! Yes, you! You will need to pick up all the slack and do all the shit work caring for our kids and cleaning and making food and keeping this shit organized, so we can out to work caring for other people’s kids and cleaning and making food and keeping shit organized.

We are committed to achieving internal democracy. We will do whatever is necessary to ensure that every woman in our movement has an equal chance to participate, assume responsibility, and develop her political potential.

See how they snuck that caveat in there? Every woman in our movement. Those of you who don’t agree can go fuck yourselves.

VII We call on all our sisters to unite with us in struggle.

Hey, why not? It sounds like ever so much fun!

We call on all men to give up their male privilege and support women’s liberation in the interest of our humanity and their own.

Yes, please give up the privilege of doing all the work that makes the world go round, dying earlier than women as a reward for that and yet being blamed for everything that hurts women’s feelings. Black men in particular should be surrendering the privilege of dying way before anyone else.

Poor, poor white women. So oppressed, they live longer than anyone else.

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Master Beta

“All power structures throughout history have been male-dominated and male-oriented. Men have controlled all political, economic and cultural institutions and backed up this control with physical force. They have used their power to keep women in an inferior position”

Men, fuck yeah! And what the fuck were women doing about this? Nothing, the losers.

Kai

Well, they were producing and raising the next generation of men. Which is a pretty useful task, and effective division of labour.

Master Beta

“All other forms of exploitation and oppression (racism, capitalism, imperialism, etc.) are extensions of male supremacy”

Capitalism. That well known form of oppression. This proves they don’t have a clue what oppression is. This also demonstrates how feminism is a child of socialism. Notice how they don’t mention socialism as a form of oppression? Yeah, I guess Stalin wasn’t that oppressive really.

Stue

That nonsense about ‘class consciousness’ is another give away. Only the hardcore lefties talk like that or use that phrase.

James Thrice

No offense Mrs. Judgy, but I wouldn’t eat the weenies either. They remind me of catheters . . .

James Thrice

On a side note, I think it will be feminist teaching Men’s Studies. That’s about the only way Men’s Studies classes would get institutionalized in Canada. The unintentional positive will be fewer young men will waste their time taking such a pointless course.

We regard our personal experience, and our feelings about that experience, as the basis for an analysis of our common situation. We cannot rely on existing ideologies as they are all products of male supremacist culture. We question every generalization and accept none that are not confirmed by our experience.

There it is. Feminism revealed as Solipsistic Marxism.

Objectivity, claim some, is only “ostensibly [the] non-involved stance.” In actuality, it is the male stance. Therefore, the story goes, our respect for the scientific method is simply an outcome of our traditional (sexist, hence, male-biased) political inclinations.

“I have personally experienced gravity and I feel that it is an oppressive, patriarchal “law,” so I don’t believe in it. Who needs parachutes, let’s go skydiving!”

We call on all men to give up their male privilege and support women’s liberation in the interest of our humanity and their own.

And here we see the basis for feminism is that women be given things. For all the talk about “fighting for liberation” it’s mostly just that: talk. I’ve seen countless feminists prattle on about the “important work” they’re doing by discussing their feelings on a blog or urging women to talk to each other to “work” on their liberation. Recently there’s been a lot of discussion about women being “missing” from the boards of directors of major corporations and the solution suggested is that women be “given” more seats on those boards. No one talks about women earning seats on those boards based on knowledge and experience. But that’s okay. I suppose they’ll know the correct policies of corporate governance when the “feel” right.

This time we are going all the way.

Uggh. Just the thought of “going all the way” with a feminist has me reaching for the brain bleach (preferably 12-year-old oak-cask-aged)…

But the larger point is that “on-campus men’s centers” won’t actually address anything that can possibly be of help or value to men. Academia has been so saturated with feminism that such centers will inevitably be nothing more than indoctrination and re-education camps. Any “men’s center” that actually worked to address the needs and concerns of men would be hounded off campus in a matter of weeks.

Dire Badger

Abortion on a whim, pregnancy primacy, class warfare, 60 percent of america enslaving the other 40%, victim politics, ‘infallible computers’, government-controlled health records, suspension of Habeas Corpus, mandatory equality of outcome, unlimited surveillance, suspension of the right to travel and right of exit, mandatory compliance with authority, ‘psychological birth control’ (gay privilege), public officials ‘above the law’, world government, outlawing and discouragement of marriage and family, outlawing of religious freedom, taxation without representation, rewriting history, drugging people from cradle to grave, standardized drugging of boys to make them compliant, psychological control of the entire population, widespread experimental social engineering, propaganda as part of standardized curriculae, ongoing constant warfare, disarming the population, virtual reality ‘entertainment’ replacing human and childhood interaction entirely, a bloated standing military, a bloated standing government, foreign social controls, foreign governments making decisions on how we must live and interact, shutting down avenues of free speech, thought crime, pornography being dramatically superior to real human contact, government control of all trade, mandatory licensing of lemonade stands, subway musicians, and lawn mowing… government monopolies, outlawing of consensual relations between post-pubescent adults, media control and secrecy, unlawful searches and seizure ‘stop and frisk’, suspension of the right to face your accuser, guilty until proven innocent, glorifying victimhood, systematic baby mutilation, giving guns to terrorists and foreign criminal cartels, suspension of personal liberties, corporate sponsored government outlawing of ‘unhealthy substances’, outright control of personal property such as cars and real estate, soldiers as police forces, random searches of travelers, suspension of patient confidentiality, legalized murder if you claim abuse, and about a billion more restrictions on self-determination.

I think that soon feminists are going to worry less about ‘going all the way’ and more about men that have decided to ‘go all the way’.

ian

You nailed it bru! Its well on its way!

Alex

As bad as it would be, I wish they would go all the way. It would be a nice showcase of what happens when men are forced to push back. Wouldn’t even need to go 100%, these pussies wouldn’t be able to handle 25%

zykos

I noticed something worth mentioning at the end of one of the articles you linked to:

“I don’t think we can or should speak of this as simply an issue of the performance of ‘boys’ versus ‘girls,’ and instead we need to look more closely at performance within the category of ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ within particular classrooms. What kind of households are they from? What are their social backgrounds?

I recently read something that was going in the same direction, namely that gender differences in academic performance are smaller than differences due to socio-economic backgrounds. And I see no reason to dispute this claim. However, isn’t it interesting how insistent all these academics are that the discrepancies, when they affect males negatively, should be investigated elsewhere? The same academics suddenly are much less cautious when talking about issues where females have it seemingly worse, and sexism and discrimination suddenly become the “obvious” explanation for all women’s issues.

Women’s centers because of course women are oppressed everywhere because they are women. No men’s centers because it’s not clear wether men are oppressed just because they’re men. That’s how the tune goes.

You know, it’s so funny that you bring up the movie “McClintock!” because it is used as a shining example of the “patriarchy” by feminists – I mean, look! He publicly humiliated her and then spanked her for behaving badly! PATRIARCHY!!!Eleventy!!One!1!!

But I always bring up another point, and that point is that it was the innate, inherent desire of men to PROTECT women instead of abuse them that stayed McClintock’s hand as long as it did, and then, when he lost his cool, kept him from doing actual harm to her. In a perfectly equal world, you’d have to look at how McClintock would have handled a man who treated him as horribly, and with as much disrespect as Mrs. McClintock did, to see how he would have treated her sans “patriarchy.”

How, exactly, would he have treated her? Well, since she would be exactly equal to a man in every way, one can only assume he’d have done to her what he’d have done to a man who was similarly disrespectful to him.

How would we know what he’d do?

Watch the fucking movie.

He beats the ever loving shit out of a guy that is disrespectful to him. In modern times, it would have put him in the hospital. He puts fist to face, boot to stomach, and as I recall, even takes after him with an oak chair which gets broken over the poor bastard.

In a world where men and women were 100% equal, exactly as these feminists desired, Mrs. McClintock would likely have been beaten to near death, because, no matter how you parse it, a woman would not be able to physically handle such a beating the way a man would. But that’s the equality that feminists are pushing for, without even realizing it. This is why they have such massive amounts of cognitive dissonance in their arguments – they want to keep the privilege that allows them to act like a man in a man’s world, but without facing the same consequences that men face for similar actions. They want to be able to cuss and spit with the best of them, but when the fists start flying, they are still interested in that privilege, by golly, and they are still more than happy to let a man come in and protect them – whether it be by staying his own hand and not hitting a girl, or by stepping in to protect her from a man with less impulse control.

For sure and for certain, feminists don’t really know what they are doing. You posted a pretty long list of things that appear to be mix of things you think are coming, things that are already here, and things that are already here that you’ve hyperbolized, which is a list everybody needs to read and think long and hard about, but what you hinted at at the end of your list is the point I want to make:

If feminists really, truly want to see what it really looks like to be subordinated to and dominated by men, they are headed down the right path.

None of them realize the truth, which is to say that the only reason that women aren’t kept like livestock, with one purpose and one purpose only – reproduction, is because throughout history, men have desired a woman’s companionship, support, and love, and would rather have a woman as a partner then a slave.

When women work to remove companionship, support, and love, what use is a woman to a man at that point? She isn’t even good for reproduction then, is she, because she’ll take his kids, right?

If men were truly as horrible as these feminists make out, every woman on Earth would be chained to a radiator and used for breeding. The fact that they aren’t should lend itself as a clue to the fact that men aren’t as horrible as these women like to make out, since even in the bad old days of the “patriarchy” we spent more time protecting women fromt eh slings and arrows than we did subjugating them, right?

I liken the feminist movement to poking a big, friendly, benevolent Rottweiler with a stick. You’ll get away with it for a while, because that dog loves you and thinks maybe you’re worth the annoyance. When you’ve done it to him enough times that you’ve proven you’re no longer worth it, what’s the Rottweiler going to do to you?

Is he going to snarl and snap?

Walk away and leave you altogether?

Or is he going to maul you to death?

None of the above is going to go well for feminists – consider the ‘day without men” discussion we’ve already had.

They have no idea what they are asking for, and by God, if they keep after it they’re likely to get it.

And they will not like it.

freetofish

The thing is though, most men in positions of power, be it economic or political or both, they love them some feminism because it keeps the more unruly men that may bite back, both against women and them, in check. They are allies in that fight.

Why do you think they incarcerate the men most likely to actually fight back the most?

The more the common man is made into a wage/debt slave the better off women and men in power are. The less freedom they have, the easier they are to control.

JB has brought it up before, but what can never be understated is the confusion people have between so called patriarchy and what it truly is, monied aristocracy. Rich people have always held the power. From the guy who had the biggest portion of mammoth meat, to the men (and their wives and families) that currently run the world.

Also, one more point – how fucking narcissistic do you need to be when you, as a woman, think you’ve got some sort of say in whether men are allowed to create a support group for themselves?

I never once thought that I’d interject myself into some woman’s support group on my college campus and challenge their right to exist. Just the idea of it makes me sick – what fucking right do I have to tell them what they can and can’t do?

I’ve never really considered the term “feminazi” to be hyperbole, because that’s exactly what these bitches act like – they are all little totalitarians, only with little desire for the actual responsibility that comes with being dictator.

/The rich are the ones with supremacy. Men and women alike. Confusing “patriarchy” with “aristocracy” is exactly what makes feminism so ineffective as a method of inquiry.

Confusing aristocracy with wealth can also lead to problems. Many of the wealthy today could be considered “aristocracy” especially if they have ties to a company that was bailed out at tax payers’ (peasants’) expense, or exist because of some monopoly granted by the state.

However, wealth does not necessarily imply aristocracy, as traditionally, aristocracy required some tie to the state. Andrew Carnegie was an extremely wealthy man, and toward the end of his life he certainly had some shady connections, but he did not inherit his wealth, and it was created through (generally) providing for people rather than taking from them.

In my admittedly limited experience, the self-made rich tend not to be self-entitled pricks about having wealth. It’s their kids, the ones who have inherited rather than worked for their wealth who are the “spoiled royalty”.

You’re right to make the distinction between wealth and aristocracy. I use that word to mean “inherited wealth”. In a meritocracy, we need to have some means to limit the accumulation of wealth within one family.

Usually, that takes the form of an estate tax, which puts money back into the social pool so others can have their shot at it.

jabrwok

Except that estate taxes just incentivize estate planning dodges. Better to let the spoiled brats inherit and blow said inheritance on drugs and whores. It gets back into the economy and they can be held up as examples of How Not To Do It.

One of the reasons many people work and save is so that they can leave a goodly chunk of change for their kids. Telling them not to waste their time because it’ll all be appropriated by the State discourages the kind of economic dynamism that we need more of.

True, I’m just twitchy about the idea that taxes should be used for social engineering purposes. Insofar as I support that sort of thing it’s in the form of abolishing the entire current tax code (thus giving everyone a 15% or more raise immediately [SS/Medicare + employer’s “matching contributions” eat up about that much] and imposing an ~15% 1st-time retail sales tax. The more you spend on brand-new stuff (including food), the more you pay in taxes, and *everyone* pays!

First off, as a citizen in a country that has retail sales taxes both nationally, GST and in most provinces, study after study has proven that sales taxes such as those proportionally harm the less wealthy.

Lets take for instance if as you stated sales tax on food. Weekly food bill for a family of 4. For arguments sake,lets say $250.00 (probably understated) So $1000.00 per month for food. Sounds like a lot, but works out to $2.75 per person per meal.

So, up here if that food was taxed with our retail sales tax that would be and additional 12% on top of the $1000.00. $120.00 per month in taxes just to feed the family.

$1440 per year.

So, you have one family that makes the median family salary of $50,000 per year. That tax is 3% of their gross pay.

Now take a family in the top 20% of wage earners. $92,000 per year and up. That tax is only 1.5%( or less) of their gross pay.

Now take a family just above the poverty line say $25,000 per year. Now that tax is 5.7% of their gross pay.

Now, as to estate taxes, well lets let the Founding Fathers speak to that.

Food, heat, water – basic survival should be exempt from taxation, if you ask me.

Then it comes down to “the more you spend, the more you pay”.

jabrwok

I’m familiar with the “it’ll hurt the poor more” arguments, but I don’t find them sufficiently convincing. A lot of the food budgets of poor people is spent on fast food. Driving up the cost would encourage better spending habits in the smarter poor (buying raw ingredients in bulk and avoiding junk-food). And you’ve ignored the raise that comes from abolishing the current tax code.

There’s also the moral argument that by essentially *rewarding* poverty, we’re perpetuating it. Why should people save and work to get out of poverty if they’re punished for doing so, but subsidized as long as they remain “poor”?

I admit I don’t have numbers at hand, but I don’t see how a 15% (or more) raise, coupled with a tax on 1st-time retail sales (they can always buy non-food stuff 2nd hand and avoid taxes) would be a significant hardship. Of course it *would* require forethought and a degree of self-discipline…

freetofish

Dude, you aren’t convinced by math? What are you, a feminist?You take your biases about poor people and try and use that as an argument?

I just laid out math, simple math, based on food purchases from a grocery store that show exactly how a retail tax effects the poor more proportionally to their income.

Do you have any fucking idea what being poor is like? Rewarding poverty? Are you serious? What exactly is rewarding about poverty? You need to turn off Fox news for a day or two.

jabrwok

I don’t have a TV, so the “fox news” jibe is meaningless noise.

I acknowledge that the food budget eats up more of the income of the “poor” than of the “rich”, but so does everything. I note that you still haven’t acknowledged the increase in net pay attendant upon abolishing the income and payroll taxes. You also ignore that the poor spend a lot more than they should on junk and fast-food.

Your increase in net pay scheme is also tilted to the wealthy vs the middle class and poor. If a family making $100,000 gets a 15% pay increase and instead pays some level of retail tax they come out much much further ahead than the family making $25,000. Its simple, basic math.

Your inferring poor people spend more on fast food vs rich people is completely irrelevant to the math. It is a complete straw man argument. It is you trying to somehow derail an logical math based equation with “feelings” I’m seriously starting to think you are a feminist.

The math is the math.

As to the story you linked, you can blame that on crony capitalism. That isn’t Welfare pays too much, that is large corporations being unwilling to pay a living wage to their employees.

Jabrwok: If you’re now throwing in payroll taxes, most serious analysis would raise your “15%” NST rate to something like 23% and likely 25%. (Since individuals would now have to cover the employer’s share, which I doubt they’re going to pass on in increased wages.

And that NR article is largely bull since it assumes that a “welfare” recipient is receiving maximum benefits from all available programs. Cato has an axe to grind…

goober

Good comments guys. I find myself agreeing with lost sailor on this, although i dont think the nst would be as difficult to implement as he fears.

My biggest like of the nst is a massive simplification of the system and an opportunity to reset a massive, leviathan system.

My biggest dislike is that it would be just as simple to re-complicate an nst, drive public policy with it just like an income tax (by taxing undesirable things at higher rates) andgo right back to the same leviathan as before.

My tax proposal would be to revoke the federal governments ability to tax people directly, and go back to them taxing the state like the status quo was pre-1913. For various reasons that ive spoken to before, i think this would work swimmingly, and also create the opportunity for each state to implement a taxation scheme that best fits its constituency, and allow escape from unfair or burdensome tax regimes.

Essentially create competition. Competition never hurt anything. Its why we walked on the moon.

freetofish

and I noticed you completely ignored what your Founding fathers had to say about inherited wealth and estate taxes as it doesn’t fit your narrative.

jabrwok

It wasn’t relevant to the national sales tax proposal. I also haven’t read it yet, so you your assertion that I ignored it, along with your assertion as to *why* I presumably ignored it, are more meaningless noises.

jabrwok

Ok, I’ve read your link now. Most of which was quoting “Liberal Curmudgeon” and his/her/its interpretation of some of the Founding Fathers’ commentary on the inheritance of land. None of what was quoted relates to non-landed wealth, and given that, absent an aristocracy, landed inheritances tend to be split up and sold off by the inheritors, many of the objections to such inheritances no longer apply.

Inheritance of stocks, bonds, and other liquid and semi-liquid assets doesn’t present a problem as such assets are still very much a part of the economy and drive wealth creation for others, regardless of what the inheritors do with them.

it is meant to eliminate the ability of the power-elite to tweak the controls, influencing actions, rewarding approved behavior and punishing unapproved behavior by using the progressive tax system as a sort of “secondary law” where you can levy ‘fines” on people for doing things you don’t like, even if they aren’t illegal.

Jabrwok’s comments about the poor eating “too much” fast food, and using the taxation system to compel them to buy more raw ingredients and cook for themselves sort of proves my point.

Who the heck are you to try to tell a grown-ass man what he should and shouldn’t be eating, and tweak the system of taxation to forward your goal?

If you want to put your own money into an education campaign to try and convince the poor to eat less fast food, go for it. But don’t use the government, and me, by proxy, to tweak the taxation system to implement a “by proxy” fine for unapproved behavior in an attempt to help/hinder/maintain any status quo. Not in my name. Just don’t do it. I want no part of it.

But no matter how much I don’t want that, folks like Jabrwok will drag folks like me along, kicking and screaming, to hold a gun to some poor man’s head and tell him how he ought to live.

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” CS Lewis
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have an opinion. I’m not saying that you can’t judge people based on their actions. Personally, I think that there is a tendency among the poor in America to eat too much fast food – more than I would, for sure.
But so what? If I cared about it a whole bunch, I’d probably try to change some minds. I write about culinary stuff on my blog all the time, and talk up the fact that cooking for yourself is not that damn hard, so I do try, to an extent.
But there’s a difference between trying to change minds, and coercing changes via punishment. One is positive. One is very much not so.

It’s a nice idea in theory, but unlikely to be workable, especially with the proposal to limit the consumption tax to 1st purchase only (not a feature of most serious proposals), which would incentivize a huge black market and make tax revenue incredibly unstable.

Most serious proposals paint a different picture. They include in a National Sales Tax (we’ll leave the issue of state sales taxes aside) all goods and services at point of retail sale with very few exemptions, with a “rebate” to everyone on the first $18,000-$19,000 of purchases (or whatever the poverty level is). But since everything is included (food, rent, government services–stamps, bus, and subway–doctors and medical services) you’ve just raised the cost of living by 15%. Which is enormously regressive. Currently the 15% marginal rate covers incomes up to $36,000 (single) and $73,000 (married) with a median income rate nationally of $57,000. The lower the income, the harder the tax hits. And the levels at which it disproportionately hits are actually pretty high.

Most proposals claim it will reduce tax compliance costs, but not at the retail level: those costs would inevitably go up and the pressure to aggressively audit and monitor that compliance will be huge.

And the immediate affect it would have on prices and purchasing patterns would likely crash the economy, making the problem even worse.

Couple of problems with your idea.
First off, as a citizen in a country that has retail sales taxes both nationally, GST and in most provinces, study after study has proven that sales taxes such as those proportionally harm the less wealthy.

I agree, but let’s start with the discussion that taxes harm everyone. Yes, it’s worse when they harm the more vulnerable more than they do the more established, but let’s start this discussion out where it needs to be started – less taxes and commensurately less government services for every man, woman, and child in America would result in a better living standard for nearly everyone. Those that would be negatively affected by the lack of government services would almost surely see an increase in charitable spending to make up for it (and don’t poo poo this. When times are good, charitable spending eclipses even the most motivated of government programs).

Taxes see a massive bureaucratic loss before they get back to the public. The idea that the government can spend the people’s money better than the people can, themselves, is just silly, simplistic ignorance in almost every case (and in the cases where it is not, it is hubristic arrogance or totalitarian evil). If we can start with that basis, then let’s move on…

Lets take for instance if as you stated sales tax on food… …of their gross pay.

But almost every proposal for the national sales tax excludes taxes on necessary goods and services. Food, water, heat… all the necessities are excluded from the proposal, so your argument kind of falls flat there. Most states in the US where there is a sales tax likewise excludes taxes on unprepared food items and so forth. Not that I disagree with the fact that a national sales tax takes the “progressive tax” feature out of the taxation scheme and actually reverses it to an extent. But that’s kind of incidental to the overriding concept – it isn’t meant to place burden on the poorer, nor give the wealthy a leg-up, it is meant to eliminate the ability of the power-elite to tweak the controls, influencing actions, rewarding approved behavior and punishing unapproved behavior by using the progressive tax system as a sort of “secondary law” where you can levy ‘fines” on people for doing things you don’t like, even if they aren’t illegal. A sort of “extra-legal” power that is used to justify and perpetrate all sorts of injustice on people every day.

The lack of a progressive system could be fixed, I think, without maintaining the leviathan that we all deal with on a yearly basis down here, and all of us – every man jack – are in violation of in some way or another, because you can’t possibly be in compliance with every writ and jot and title in the thing. My thoughts are that this is a feature, not a bug, in the system. When everyone is a criminal, they can get you any time they want.

I don’t really have any special aversion to estate taxes. They aren’t any different in my eye than any other tax – it’s taking that which isn’t yours, using the threat of coercion and violence by the government, on the basis of some compelling “public good or necessity.”

I’m not so foolish as to think that we could somehow function in anarchy, but at the same time, I think that there is a lot longer list of “compelling public goods” that are currently being enforced, which are ludicrous reasons to rob a man of his hard-earned wealth, than there are true, honest, “compelling public goods” that would be justifiable reasons to do so.

So I scoff at estate taxes in the same way I scoff at all taxes right now – as long as we pay tax money to support artists so that they can put crucifixes into jars of piss, I will scoff at them. As long as we are holding a gun to the head of Christians in this nation and saying “pay for your lord and savior’s likeness to be submerged in urine or we’ll put you in jail and allow you to be gang raped”, I’m going to scoff.

As long as my government tells me that they will clap handcuffs on me for not contributing money to build the hellfire missile that will be mounted to that drone and then used to incinerate a young family in Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan, I’m going to scoff.

As long as they hold a gun to the head of a man in Alaska and tell him to pay for the highway in my town, or hold a gun to my head and tell me to pay for a bridge to some godforsaken island in Alaska, I’m going to scoff.

The idea of estate taxes isn’t my problem. The idea that taxes are a good thing; anything more than a necessary evil, and that taking money from a man against his will to pay for things he wouldn’t pay for on his own accord is actually right and proper…

…Well, THAT’S my problem with taxes.

If something is wrong to do as an individual, it is wrong to do as a group, no matter how large the group. When you say “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” you are merely saying “some people’s needs are more important than others.”

This, my friends, is wrong.

freetofish

I used the food in the sales tax equation as jaberwok included it in his example.

I’m no big fan of taxes. As a single white male making well above average income, I pay more than most. That said I have to ask where the factual data is for your statement:

” less taxes and commensurately less government services for every man, woman, and child in America would result in a better living standard for nearly everyone”

If you look at the Quality of life index for the world, of the top 10 countries there is a mix of taxation levels with more of them being higher tax/service countries.

Places that can afford higher taxation are by definition more wealthy. Of course the quality of life is going to be better there.

As for my proof that lower taxation and less service would result in higher quality of life?

The Laffer Curve, for one.

The rest of it is more or less just the culmination of all the data I’ve read and seen in my life. Government services suck – the polls taken by folks using them are pretty much unanimous. Whenever the government gets into the business of providing things also provided by the markets, they are usually slower, more surly, more expensive, and lower quality.

Extrapolate that to the things that they do that don’t have competition in the private sector, and you’ll understand.

Before the government stepped in, we didn’t have people starving to death in America. How was that possible?

Before the government stepped in, roads got built all over the west and all over america that made sense, had continuity, and functioned perfectly. How was that possible?

Before the government stepped in, men negotiated their own wages, got paid a wage that they were satisfied with, and left for better work if the pay wasn’t good enough. How was that possible?

I doubt very much that it is necessary for me to go on, because I imagine I made my point, but I could… for hours…

freetofish

I disagree with your assertion of ad hoc ergo propter hoc.

Your point was that lowering taxation would increase standard of living, I asked for proof and referenced the world standard of living. If your theory is correct, then given the G20 or even G7 economies in the world in isolation, the standard of living of those TOP economies would be topped by the lowest taxation country and standard of living would drop off as the rate of taxation rose. That is NOT supported by the actual rankings of those top economies.

The Laffer Curve is somewhat simplistic as it only accounts for a single taxation rate. If there was any one certainty in economics or economic theories, the world would be a much more peaceful and prosperous place for everyone.

I agree government services can suck but I don’t think you can just blanket brush everything as government run=sucks. Nor can you make a concrete case that more private sector run services would equal better. Some things can not be run on a for profit basis.

Lastly, looking back even 50 years at things like wages just isn’t relevant in a global market place run by multinational corporations.

You can disagree with my statement of ad hoc, ergo propter hoc all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that you are committing that fallacy.

Perhaps more wealth and better standard of living makes people more willing to pay higher taxes?

Perhaps more wealth and a better standard of living is caused by higher taxes?

Barring proof to either side, you can’t make the assumption that it’s so without proof of that, without committing that fallacy.

Also… perhaps, as is my firm belief, that the results of that poll are entirely arbitrary and hopelessly biased– who sets the standard for “quality of life?” What is it based on?

I think you’ll find that they have assigned a “quality of life” value to there being more government services, meaning that countries with lower levels of government services have a lower quality of life in that index, without really assessing whether the increased government services actually increase the quality of life, or not. It is just assumed that government services increase the quality of life without ever actually proving that fact. So I don’t even take it for granted that the countries at the top of that list even HAVE a higher quality of life than those lower on the list, since the values used for assessment are skewed towards “more government services = higher quality of life.”

Take a look.

As for higher taxes resulting in lower quality of life, just look at the stagnation in Europe. It is almost across the board – the countries with the highest taxation rates are in more trouble than the countries with lower taxation rates. Am I committing ad hoc fallacies now?

You’re damn right I am… 

As to your statements about sometimes government services aren’t so bad, I don’t necessarily disagree in theory. But it doesn’t matter – even if they are 100% as efficient and friendly and super-awesome as you’d get from a private sector company, it doesn’t change the fact that the only method by which the government can operate is force and coercion.

If I come to you and say “hey, let’s pay more money to schools so our kids can get an education,” and you say “by God, Goober, that’s a great idea!” then we’ve completed a perfectly voluntary, mutually beneficial transaction and life is good.

That isn’t how government works.

Government says “give me money to pay for schools or I’ll fucking take your house. And if you resist me taking your house, I’ll throw you in jail. And if you resist me throwing you in jail, I’ll fucking shoot you between your eyes and won’t lose a second’s sleep over it.”

It is for that reason that I think that the only thing that government can do is to reduce liberty, choice, and self-determination. Those, as it were, are the most important values that I assign to my life, and so I have an aversion to government action and think that it should be minimized to the absolute minimum that it can possibly be. It is an ugly, nasty, rough bastard of an institution, and I just think we’re all way to quick to scramble to give it more and make it bigger, when we really ought to stop and think about it.

freetofish

You’re right, that isn’t how government works because in the end most people are selfish assholes. They can’t see far enough ahead to think hey, we need to fund schools so the next generation of doctors, engineers, scientists etc can be educated.

Even as a single guy with no kids I don’t begrudge things like school taxes because one of those snot nosed little bastards could be giving me a heart transplant or something in 40 years.

They don’t want to pay taxes to support police or firemen, then wail and bitch when they get mugged or their house burns down.

I really don’t like these studies courses because all they tend to do is teach hostility to other groups. I took a women’s studies course and it basically taught “all men are rapists” and not much more. I got nothing out of it other than the view that feminists are just women who hate men.

Michael

The game of chess is over 1,000 years old. The rules of chess are virtually unchanged over that time. The queen is still the most powerful piece on the board.

Alex

yet the king is the most important. women can only do what they do because men allow them to. they step outside the line, that’s their issue

Master Beta

And the pawns kinda look like penises.

Dire Badger

Fixed-

After centuries of laboring under the intense expectations of being men, of devoting every ounce of our being to pleasing and supporting women, men as individuals are choosing to liberate themselves from the spectre of female indenture. We MRA’s are dedicated to giving men the tools and information neccessary to live their lives in freedom from the oppressive collectivism of feminism.

Men are the enslaved class. Our slavery is total, affecting every facet of our lives. We are enslaved, not by women, but by our own need to seek the approval, protection, and well-being of women. We are exploited as sex objects, violence proxies, replaceable slaves, and cheap labor. We are considered disposable beings, who’s only purpose is to create a framework of civilization to make women’s lives easier. Our individual humanity is denied, and any deviance from prescribed norms punished brutally by our conscience, our women, and by the physical force of men themselves who are following the directives and manipulation of the female imperative.

Because we have lived so intimately with the female imperative, we have been kept from seeing our institutionalized sufferings as a personal condition caused by individuals. This creates the illusion that a woman’s relationship with her man is a matter of public and political interaction that can only be resolved collectively. In reality, men are self-motivated individuals that are perfectly capable of working out our problems ourselves, and the framework of collectivism works only to enhance our individual disposability, rather than to combine and enhance our collective value.

We identify the agents of our disposability as women and our own instinctive need to assist them. Female manipulation is the oldest, most basic form of domination. All other forms of exploitation and oppression, such as racial supremacy, cultural domination, and slavery, are extensions of female manipulation: Men do all these things in a desperate attempt to win access to the reproductive power that women ultimately control. All power structures throughout history have been created solely for the purpose of pleasing, protecting, and enhancing women and gaining that ultimate biological neccessity, reproduction. All political, economic, and cultural institutions have been created solely for their benefit, and this benefit has been backed up with physical force and emotional and sexual manipulation when it has not been provided willingly. All women (except the really old, ugly and fat ones that are poor reproductive bets) receive economic, sexual, and psychological benefits from their superior social position.

Attempts have been made to shift the burden of responsibility from biology to institutions or to men themselves. We condemn these arguments as evasions. Institutions alone do not oppress; they are merely tools of our attempt to gain feminine favor. To blame institutions implies that men and women are identical, obscures the fact that women benefit from the willing submission of men, and gives women the excuse that they are the real oppressed. On the contrary, any woman is free to renounce her superior position, provided that she is willing to be treated like a man, act and sacrifice her life, safety, and wellbeing like a man, and behave in all ways like a man.

We reject the idea that any of our life-destroying labor, disposability, and guilt are somehow the fault of anything but our own biological need to protect, enhance, and please women. This submission to neccessity is not the result of any sort of cultural pressure, brain-washing, stupidity, or mental illness, but merely our ability to recognize that in their very core, women are fundamentally incapable of creating civilization without our help. We do not need to change ourselves, OR to change women, we merely need to recognize the fact that we are NOT expandable, we are NOT disposable, and that our submission to the whims of angry and psychologically damaged feminists is harming ourselves, the civilization we have built, and women themselves.

The most slanderous evasion of all is that individual relationships somehow have a political or collectivist context, that somehow men view the competition of women as something desirable and cooperation between the sexes as somehow undesirable, and that the creation of great and lasting bastions of satisfaction of female material wants is somehow an oppression of women.

We regard both personal experience and the experiences of others as the basis for a logical analysis of our individual situation. We cannot rely on irrational and unfounded ideologies based upon ‘feelings’ and ’emotions’, ideologies that sacrifice proven formulas for human interaction and civilized moral and social frameworks for fantasies of perfect equality, female supremacy, and individual disposability. We understand that generalizations are often neccessary to maintain equilibrium, but are skeptical and prefer to explore truth by logical and rational methods those things, such as ethics and interpersonal interaction, rather than relying on ‘feelings’ and ‘guesses’ except where action is immediately required and we have no better information. We must, however, rely on existing ideologies in the absence of reliable facts or logical evidence, until such time as we can analyze them reliably, and remain skeptical of any that do not fit rational and observable fact.

Our chief task at present is to develop male individual consciousness of their own potential worth, and to expose and unmask the towering and illogical ideologies that are warping our individualism into a twisted parody of our earlier biological imperative. We must help men to self-realize their own hyperagency and the clearly female-driven nature of all of our institutions. We cannot accomplish this through ‘therapy’, since such self-realization of individuality must come entirely from within, from a healthy understanding that the entire male-female dynamic is entirely a personal experience between individuals, and that attempting to treat such concrete individual realities with social collectivism, which does nothing but damage the relationships between men and women.

The first requirement for developing personal and individual recognition of reality is to disseminate the truth, and to break down the lies of collectivism and feminism and expose them to the scrutinizing eye of logic and objectivity.

We identify with the greatest of men, using them as role models of personal growth and seeking to create the same level of success and actualization of our greatest potential as individuals rather than bringing down our accomplishments to that of the lowest common denominator through collectivism.

We will do all we can to bring other men up to the greatest level of their potential, considering such factors as economic, genetic, status and educational differences as challenges to overcome and opportunities for personal growth. We will assist men in recognizing their potential by giving them the knowledge and tools as brothers, but in recognition that nothing worth having is given for free, we will not lead them to self-actualization…. they must develop their own will to power, and acknowledge their own biological hyperagency as men and masters of their own destiny. We will not saddle them with welfare or damage them by holding their hands. They must be willing to climb the cliff of ignorance and drink deeply of the waters of knowledge of their own free will.

In our fight against the ever-recurring tyranny of collectivism and it’s unsustainable handmaidens of feminism, victim-worship, socialism, egalitarianism, and the race to mediocrity, we will always take the side that increases self-determination. We will not ask for proof by authority, but will always strive for freedom, self-determination and voluntary participation, as this has proven through the centuries to greatly increase progress, civilization, and the interaction and welfare of both men and women.

The time for individuality has come. The age of fantasy has passed, and the hard-nosed realist must supplant the romantic and the deceptive lies that have gripped this world. It has become unsustainable, and those of us that see through the lovely falsehoods woven by the forces of collectivism must now act.

goober

Heh…

Dire Badger

Hey, I write good rhetoric 🙂
It sounds better when spoken into a microphone with an english accent by a talented actor. MLK did more with less.

Bashir Al-Flange

The reliance on “our collective experience” over “science” as the standard, and that “science is suspect because guys do it” is pure Lysenkoism. It’s worthy of Pol Pot, who executed sceintists and smart people so they wouldn’t get in his way, or Mao’s Great Leap Forward, ditto. But don’t crow too loud conservatives: today’s tea partiers are just as anti-intellectual and no better on biology, evolution, geology or climate change science, because Jesus.

Now the aristocracy as we know it was truly mostly male, so they have that tiny point in their favor. There were some dim attitudes that needed changing, like figuring out drugs should be tested out on women and men separately because the effects and side effects often differ. Until recently it was assumed drug testing on men was sufficient for everybody, we now know that is wrong.

My feelings on a men’s studies program are mixed. I have no objection to that. I greatly respect Dr. Farrell’s “The Myth of Male Power”, it was an eye-opener. But there’s a part of me that thinks of going to a male studies class, as, well, wimpy. Like I need to study to know how to be a guy? Yeeg. A lot of us men are like that you know: life may not have been fair to us, but a class to learn about feeling sorry for ourselves doesn’t grab me.

Maybe the better idea is to fold such classes into established disciplines like anthropology, it would be an interesting sub-discipline.

Typical. Their entire retarded “philosophy” (an insult to all philosophers & people with a brain) is based on feelings. Feelings???!!! Are they high??? And anyone who questions this moral bankruptcy is basically a heathen who shall be put to death by the inquisitor for heresy. Hmmmmm. Anyone reminded of another group that work like this? Like say…The Catholic Church and Spanish Inquisition? Or those charming little tantrum-throwers of Al Qaeda? Lovely.

I think that red stockings are missing a subsequent T, A and R in there somewhere, don’t you agree JB?

I’m a male with several degrees and diploma’s but when I go to a job finding network I’m told that the only job they have for me is to hold a stop and go sign at some road works, no wonder males are dropping out of school, it doesn’t matter what you do to further your education you’ll still end up with a shitty job.

II Men are an oppressed class. Our oppression is total, affecting every facet of our lives. We are exploited as sex objects, breeders, domestic servants, and cheap labor. We are considered inferior beings, whose only purpose is to enhance women’s lives. Our humanity is denied. Our prescribed behavior is enforced by the threat of being hit with charges of physical and/or sexual violence.
Fixed. Any ‘feminist’ who doesn’t like it can go screw their militant, misandric selves. True feminism is about equality of the sexes, not “What they’ve got we should have, and more!”